Alfie sat at the kitchen table again, picked up his knife and fork and said again, loudly: “I’ll JUST DO WHAT I LIKE!!”

Since they had just stopped time, he assumed these were magic words. So he expected, on saying them, something magical to happen. But perhaps disappointingly – even though a minute before this was exactly what he had wanted – Mrs Stokes appeared in front of him.

“Oh,” he said. “Hello.”

“So …” she said. “What would that be?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Alfie.

“What would that be? In this particular case.”

“Eh?”

“Oh, come on, Alfie, don’t be dense. What – seated as you are at the kitchen table, with your knife, fork and plate at the ready – would you like to do?”

Alfie frowned. Not just because he was thinking about answering the question – although he was – but also because he had noticed something about Mrs Stokes. She had come into the room very quickly and was standing up straighter than she had before.

She was speaking to him in a loud, uncrackly voice, without seeming to hear any of his words wrong and without her hearing aids feeding back. And her Zimmer frame – if Alfie wasn’t mistaken – was lighting up. In colour! It was like it had been secretly put together from a batch of different coloured lightsabers – red and blue and yellow and green – and she’d only now switched them on.

“Um …” he said, “I’d like to eat some candyfloss.”

“OK. Just usual candyfloss or …?”

“I’d like it in the shape of a rocket!”

“Excellent! Now you’re getting into the spirit of things! Anything to go with that?”

“Er … chips?”

“Rocket candyfloss and chips!”

Mrs Stokes seemed to concentrate. The colours of her Zimmer frame started flashing. And suddenly there it was, in front of him on the table: a tube of the pinkest, fluffiest candyfloss, shaped exactly like Apollo 13, the rocket ship that Alfie most liked from when they had done the history of the moon landings at school.

The chips were built up next to it, a huge side ladder of them, criss-crossing all the way to the top. It was incredible. Although one weird thing was that beneath the candyfloss rocket there was some mash.

“Er …” said Alfie, prodding at it with his fork, “aren’t the chips enough potato?”

“That’s smoke!” said Mrs Stokes. “From the lift-off!”

“Brilliant!” said Alfie.

“Anything to drink?” she added. “Perhaps something that could help power the rocket …?”

“I don’t really want to drink oil …”

“No, but it could look a bit like oil …”

Alfie had a thought. “Well, I’ve always wondered why no one makes a fizzy chocolate drink.”

Mrs Stokes clicked her fingers and a glass appeared next to his plate full of something brown, creamy and sparkling.

“Enjoy,” she said.